leaving ain't what I'm about
by hypotheticalfanfic
Summary: It started like these things always start. Ginny/Luna; completed 08/15/11.
1. What Was Luna Lovegood Supposed to Do?

It started the way these things always start. Ginny wasn't shy, not really, not once she figured out you didn't hate her — the diary had messed her up but good, and she hadn't quite come back from it — and weren't making fun of her. Once she knew that, she was different. Funny, and bold, and a bid inconsiderate, sometimes, about manners and things. Nothing to offend anyone, just a bit too loud and affectionate for the more solemn things. She didn't stand on ceremony, and she didn't fake respect for anyone.

So when she told Professor Trelawney that Divination was a load of codswallop, and got thrown out of class, she went to the lake to watch the giant squid, because that's what Ginny always did when something made her angry, or made her cry. And, her temper still flaring from earlier, she couldn't stop herself from interfering when she saw two boys bothering another girl. "Here, you two blockheads, shove off!" She'd learned to throw a punch, of course, her brothers had seen to that, and the boys were cowardly little beasts who'd never met someone to fight back. And so when they ran away, tears on their hot little faces, and Ginny's own face bright and grinning with triumph, and she'd turned to look at the girl she'd protected, well, what was Luna Lovegood supposed to do? Not fall in love? Well, bugger that.


	2. Children's Stories, Nonsense

And really, how was she supposed to respond? Ravenclaws are clever, certainly, and Luna wasn't stupid, hadn't ever been at a loss for words her entire life. But Ginny's face, her grin, her sparkling eyes…well, Luna couldn't quite comprehend anything for a moment. She just sort of drifted on Ginny's chatter, nodded in the places that seemed appropriate, mumbled out a "thank you" through some reflexive, must-be-proper habit. Watched Ginny clasp her on the shoulder, split knuckles from punching, warm and strong and beautiful.

"Here, what's your name, anyway? You're a Ravenclaw, yes? So you're terribly bright, I'll bet." Ginny's smiled shrank a bit. "Me, not so much. I do fine, but none of us are real brains. Well, Fred and George are clever, but no one notices since they're always joking around. And Percy, I suppose he does all right, and Bill was always top of the class, and here I am, just…" Luna knew who she was, knew what had happened just last year, knew that more than anything Ginny had fallen under the spell of having someone listen to her, for once.

"No," Luna murmured, her voice too shy to come out clear. "No, I'm not clever. Not like my mother. She was dreadfully smart, you know, a spell inventor, and she…well, she died. A long time ago. And I'm Luna." She stuck out a slender hand, awkwardly, willing it not to tremble. "Luna Lovegood."

Ginny grinned again, wrapped Luna's small hand in both of her own. "I'm Ginny. Weasley, but you already knew that, with all this." She took one hand away and gestured at herself, encompassing the red hair, freckles, shabby clothes, and general aura of shabby kindness that swarmed around her. "I'm the baby, and the only girl, and…well," her eyes went dark and flat, "I'm afraid I'm not much company anymore. Not after—"

Desperate to make her smile again, Luna interrupted. "Did you know that the Aquavirius Maggot looks exactly like the human brain? It's an adaptation to help it hide in its natural habitat." Nonsense, of course, utter nonsense, the ramblings her father told her to keep her smiling after her mother, but something, anything was better than that blank look in Ginny Weasley's eyes.

"What habitat?"

"Sorry?"

"What habitat do they live in, where being a brain is protection?"

Luna was stumped, and a bit ashamed — children's stories, nonsense — but the sound of Ginny's laugh, rough and kind and not at all mocking, somehow: for that, she'd talk nonsense until the day she died.


	3. Hadn't Meant to Kiss Her, Honest

And really, that was that. Ginny seemed to always be around, hovering just out of sight, just on the edges of Luna's peripheral vision. Ready to step in, tell someone off, offer an arm around shoulders or a laugh. Just..._there_, like nobody really was for Luna anymore. And Luna did her best to reciprocate: she jabbered on about nothing to distract Ginny, gave her someone to protect, helped with spellwork. Ginny had a knack for curses, but her charms were always a little flat, a little off, and Luna couldn't figure out why. Ginny's brother was running around with Harry Potter and that Hermione Granger girl Ginny liked so much, and Ginny was doing her best to stay out of the spotlight as much as she could. After last year, Luna'd thought everyone would have been a little nicer to Ginny, but people either acted like it'd never happened or, more often, used it as a weapon.

The first time Luna cursed someone was because of Ginny Weasley. A Slytherin, one neither of them knew, kept whispering in Ginny's direction at a Quidditch match. Ginny pretended not to hear, tears trickling down her face as she watched Potter fly, and Luna tried to keep it bottled up, for her sake. After the match, though, when the boy and his friends cornered Ginny, and one of them stepped toward her with a leer on his face, well. Luna lost control. When the boys came to, stinking and bruised and covered in boils, Ginny and Luna were gone.

Luna'd dragged Ginny away, pulled her across the grounds to the lake, pushed her to the ground and wrapped her in an embrace. Rocked back and forth, holding her, whispering nonsense to make it go away: the things they'd said, the looks on their faces, what they'd planned. All of it, Luna hoped, would go away if they just stayed here for a moment. She hadn't meant to kiss her, really. Honest.

At that point, Luna had been working under the assumption that Ginny was in love with Harry Potter, or at least wanted to be, because after all he was famous, and he'd saved Ginny last year, and it simply made sense. And Luna was...well, she wasn't all right with it, but she cared more about Ginny being happy than her own crush, and besides it was irrelevant, right, because Ginny wasn't like her, so it'd never come to a head. And Luna had learned, over those months of being around her, to live with it. To tolerate and accept, albeit begrudgingly, that Ginny Weasley would never look at her the same way.

And there they were, Ginny trying to hold back her sobs, her face buried in Luna's cloak, Luna's arms wrapped around her. Luna whispered nothing into Ginny's hair, cupped the back of her head, gathered her deeper and deeper into an embrace, trying to force away the memory of what had just happened, of the diary and the chamber, of everything that had ever hurt Ginny Weasley. So when Ginny's tear-streaked face turned to meet Luna's, when their lips met somehow, when Luna suddenly realized what was happening, how was she supposed to respond? Pull away? Of course not. If Ginny needed this, whatever _this_ was, Luna would give it. And if, next minute, Ginny pulled away - Luna steeled herself - then Luna would accept it. Because, well. Ginny needed something, Luna did it, and vice versa. That's how this had always worked. Then she wasn't thinking anymore, because Ginny's hand was on her neck, pulling the kiss deeper and deeper.


	4. In That Brief, Golden Time

That first kiss sparked something ravenous and hungry in both of them, and for a season or so they seemed to always be there, in that moment, needing and wanting and giving whatever they could.

Their encounters were always brief. Had to be — neither was supposed to be in the other's room, they weren't in the same year, they didn't share classes often — no other choice. Hurried whispers and rough embraces in dark corridors, empty closets, bathroom stalls. Anywhere no one would look. Dappled afternoons in the Forest, occasional stolen moments by the lake, the odd tumble in the snow that winter. No one saw, not really, not with the excitement at the school. A murderer was on the loose, no one had spare attention for two girls sneaking notes back and forth. No one noticed.

Well, almost no one. Professor McGonagall, once. Their faces, already warm from exertion, had been reddened again by her stern gaze. McGonagall had walked right into the corner of the Restricted Section where Ginny pressed Luna to a wall, hands sliding up smooth skin; Luna's pale, slender hands tangled in thick red hair, face buried in Ginny's sun-freckled neck, lips working there as Ginny's hands danced across her body. A throat-clearing noise, high and strong; it could only belong to one person. The girls jumped away from each other as if they'd been jinxed. Luna tugged on clothing, tried to smooth her robes; Ginny pulled her shirt collar back to its proper place, desperate to hide the love bite there. Of course it was McGonagall, standing in the shadow, her face carefully blank. Ginny in particular had braced for shaming: McGonagall was her Head of House, after all. But the professor simply reminded them to stay out of the Restricted Section and sent them on their way, and that was that.

It was as if they'd been charmed, as if some sort of aura of protection was around them and no one saw what was happening. They kissed and touched and slept and ate and lived their small, joyful lives, and in each other they found some core of strength. Luna found in Ginny, in that brief golden time, a center of passion and fire, of courage and honor, that she'd never seen in anyone before. Ginny, in Luna, found peace and calm, acceptance, the sort of quiet love she'd never realized she was missing. They stole every moment they could, wrung all the joy out of it until it was dry and empty. It was almost as though they knew what was coming.


	5. The Beginning of the End

The trouble started with Harry Potter. Luna liked him, in that distant way anyone likes someone who's neither actively mean nor passively cruel. Harry was good-looking enough: a bit short, but a nice face and, more importantly, that brooding, hurt atmosphere that drew girls like moths to flame. Add in the facts that he was famous, wealthy, and a hell of a Seeker, and it made perfect sense that half the girls in Hogwarts were penning "Mrs. Harry Potter" on their notescrolls. But Ginny? The day Ginny smiled at Harry, that particular smile she'd held in reserve for Luna. Well. That was the beginning of the end.

Soon enough, Ginny was dating a boy, a _boy_, and a sore loser at that. Then another boy, then dances with boys, then, finally, snogging Harry Potter out by the lake. By _their_ lake, the one Luna couldn't go to anymore because it hurt. And it was bad enough without Harry and his friends actually being nice, and likable. And training them all. And Luna suddenly having friends, real friends, but she knew, she told Ginny, she'd trade them all for being alone in a corridor with Ginny's lips and teeth and tongue and skin. Ginny alone was worth all of the good people of Hogwarts.

But Ginny was in love, and Luna was too — just, not the right kind or with the right person. And so after the War, when Ginny invited her to the wedding, Luna said yes, and came, and smiled, and pretended to be oh so happy for Harry and Ginny. And really she was, in an odd way, because Harry was a genuine person, and obviously he cared for Ginny a lot. But the whole broomstick ride home, Luna wept and wept and thought of throwing herself in the Thames or in front of a train. But she'd never do that, of course.

And lucky for everyone involved she didn't, for her part in the larger story hadn't quite started, not just yet. Everything was about to begin, and it would all start, again, with a fortune-teller, and an argument, and a sunny afternoon.


	6. How Long Were We Gone?

A fortune-teller, a sunny afternoon, an argument. The same things, the same catalysts as before, but in a different arrangement now. Luna went on holiday, all over the world, just she and her shaking, broken father, and she found herself talking nonsense to him like he'd done for her — and like she'd done for Ginny Weasley. And they traveled and ate strange food and learned about odd little beasts, and Luna's skin reddened and peeled but never seemed to tan, and then she was home again, in the countryside, not very far from the Burrow. And she wasn't sure how long she'd been away, but the dirt and dust and filth of the house made her think it had been a while. So she pulled her long hair back, tied an apron around her waist, and started scrubbing.

When the owl came a few hours later, Luna knew what it was. No one knew she had returned just yet, but then Ginny had always seemed to know where she was. If Luna had been even a fraction more mean-spirited, she'd have thought Ginny took advantage of Harry's money and influence to keep tabs on her. But she wasn't that mean, and so she took it as something more along the lines of how she always knew where things were in the chaos of the house, buried under layers of grime or piles of books. She could simply feel them, in her mind, and she let herself believe that Ginny did much the same.

But this owl, one Harry'd bought a few years after the War, landed heavily on the post perch, with an imposing thump as he dropped the letter. Luna gave him a rat she'd just caught and he hooted low and soft, flew away. Inside the envelope, Ginny's chicken-scratch scrawl was blunt, like always. "Come see me — the pier, tomorrow afternoon. The children will be on the rides."

_The children_, Luna thought to herself, a creeping sense of horror. Ginny had children now, old enough to be on rides at a fair on the pier. "How long were we gone?" she asked herself. She'd stopped keeping track after the first year. If she thought hard, she could remember more birthdays than she'd realized. "Were we gone ten years? Or more?" A _Prophet_, that's what she needed, it'd have the date. She'd pick one up on the way to the pier.


	7. A Fortune Teller

The _Prophet_, it turned out, was rather more pictures than text — but then, these days, Luna supposed, there wasn't much news. Not like during the War. Apparently, not only was Hogwarts still functioning like always, but a new headmaster was to be named soon, and the Herbology professor, Neville Longbottom, was considered the safe bet. Good old Neville, who tripped and stammered and turned into a hero in his own right. If Luna had been the type of person who fancied boys much, she would have fancied him. He was a good sort, and they'd had a very close friendship that last year before the War, running the D.A. and keeping everyone's spirits up. But Neville had never seemed interested in her, not in that way, and it was all Luna could do to keep herself from wasting away over Ginny Weasley. Luna smiled to herself as she read about Neville's accomplishments; she felt almost content, now, sitting in the sun on the pier, listening to the delighted screaming of children on park rides.

The Muggles had done the best they could without magic — many of the rides would have frightened anyone who hadn't been on a broom. Luna sipped a lemonade and flipped idly through the rest of the _Prophet,_smiling when she chanced upon a name or a face she remembered from Hogwarts. So many of them had gone on to be Aurors, it seemed, hunting down the last vestiges of Voldemort's supporters. One of the Weasley brothers had kept up the joke shop, and brightly colored ads on a few pages made it look as though the shop was doing a roaring business.

"You'll find nothing to believe in there, dearie." A croaking voice broke through Luna's stunned haze. "Truth and rubbish don't often hide in the same place." The witch — and Luna knew a real witch from a costumed Muggle — had a face like an old apple. Short and dumpy and grey frizzled hair: she'd done a good job of the costume. But real magic flowed in her wand, and real magic kept the Muggles from looking too closely at her.

"Oh, I know," Luna's voice creaked, rusty from disuse. "If I want real news, I read the _Quibbler_. Or…" she paused, breath caught in her throat. "I used to, anyway."

"Well, now, isn't that something? I haven't heard a whisper about the _Quibbler_ in years. What's it been, thirteen years since the War?"

"I…" Luna realized, with a sudden blaze of anger, that she'd forgotten to look at the year. "Fifteen, it looks like. Fifteen years." She stared slack-jawed at the date on the _Prophet_'s front page. "Fifteen years I've been out of the world."

"Well, you're back now, aren't you?" The old witch gave a small wink. "And if I was a fortune-teller, a real one, I'd say you're likely to have a good year now."

"Divination isn't real, is it?"

"Not the kind they teach in school, that's all rubbish. Tea leaves, honestly!" The old witch's face crinkled in a wide grin. "Ah, but there are some who have a touch of the second sight about us. And me, I'd say to you: keep an eye out for a redheaded woman. She's not what she seems, not anymore. And you'd best keep a guard around your heart, dearie, until the yellow flowers start to bloom." With that odd pronouncement, the little old witch Disapparated with a soft "pop," and Luna was left sitting alone.


	8. A Sunny Afternoon

Chapter 7: A Sunny Afternoon

In the heat and the haze, belly full of lemonade, Luna felt herself nodding off. Each time, she jerked her head back up, shook herself, stretched. She could have cast a charm, or gone for a walk, but neither of those options appealed to her at the moment. And then the sun bounced into her half-closed eyes, tinted the barest bit red from Ginny's hair.

Luna sat up straight, her mind suddenly clear of the fog of drowsiness. "Ginny!"

A smile dawned over the redhead's face. Her fiery hair was swept up and back into a knot, the barest hints of gray starting to peek through at the temples. She was alone and starting to show a bit of her age, and still as beautiful as the sun. "Hello, Luna, love."

Suddenly awkward. "I, um. Sit, please!" Luna shoved her small satchel off the bench to make room. "How have you been, I suppose, is the normal question to ask at this point, right?"

Ginny laughed, hoarse and low. "How have I been? How have you been, more like? You've been out of the world for fifteen years, Luna, my oldest is almost of age!"

"Ah, yes, that." And Luna told her everything, blinking into the setting sun. Told her about traveling, about Xenophilius growing small and quiet and ill, about burying her father in the back garden, about an ill-advised engagement and a bout with some sort of plague-like sickness that still gave her aches. About all the things Luna hadn't told anyone yet: the nightmares she'd never gotten over, the way her mother's grave had been destroyed during the War, the smell of blood that seemed to follow her all the time. And Ginny, as she always had, simply listened.

"So, um," when Luna's stories had petered out and the sun gave its last glorious gasp before sinking beneath the horizon. "How are you?"

"Honestly?" Ginny sighed. "Not...not that great, Luna. Not really." And Ginny spoke, quietly, her eyes never wavering from the redheaded children spinning on Muggle rides, laughing. She talked about marriage, and how they'd been happy for a while, and the children were wonderful, but then something just...stopped working. And she and Harry hadn't spoken in weeks, and he was never home, and when he was Ginny didn't have even a fleeting interest in his doings or his life, and they were functionally divorced already, Harry'd taken to speaking quite highly of a woman on the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee, and Ginny, well, she hadn't been interested in anyone since Harry, not really, and now that she wasn't even interested in him anymore, she'd thought maybe...

"What?" A cold awareness settled in Luna's stomach. "You figured you'd call your old Hogwarts girlfriend, try it back on for size?"

"No, nothing like that, Luna." She was lying, Ginny was a shit liar, always had been. Red face, fiddling with her fingers, looking away.

"You're lying."

"Would it be so bad, Luna?" She turned, her eyes alight with the stars just beginning to peek out. "Would it? Wouldn't you be happy, and I could be happy, and it'd all be all right?"

A choice lay before Luna. She loved Ginny, still, of course, always. And it would be good, they'd always been good together, always been happy with each other. But Harry was...Harry was a friend, had been in many ways her best friend at Hogwarts. And Ginny wasn't who she'd been back then, nor was Luna.

"You're still married."

"Yes, well, it's in the works." Ginny was peering at Luna's face, starlight and satisfaction flooding her face. She'd won, she knew it, and Luna felt a sudden thrill of fear.

"And the children?"

"Oh, they'll be all right. James and Al are both old enough to choose, they'll likely pick Harry. And Lily's big enough, too, I suppose, but she'll likely stay with us. Won't that be lovely? She'll stay with us, and I'll get the house and Harry can take the boys and it's all going to be so wonderful, Luna!" Leaned forward for a kiss.

"I see you've decided on the plan." The ice in her voice even surprised Luna.

A blank look. "What?"

"Good to know you didn't need my input, Ginny. Glad to see you've decided my life for me." A rising anger.

"What are you talking about, love, I thought you'd be-"

"You thought I'd be overjoyed to hop to, fill your gaps, do what you wanted? Never a thought that I might, dunno, have plans? Or that I might not be in love with you anymore? Or that I might be too loyal to Harry to plot with his _wife_ about how to split up their marriage?"

Ginny's face hardened. Suddenly Luna was deathly afraid of her. "Well, if that's what you want, Luna. I'll just be off, then." She called to the children, gathered them to her, and with a final acid glare, Disapparated.

Luna's walk home was slow and distracted. _Whatever possessed me to say no,_ she thought to herself. _I'll send her an owl first thing, apologize, and she'll take me back, it'll be like..._She shook her head. _Like old times? Like at Hogwarts? No, Luna, you know it won't. It'll be you at Ginny's beck and call, you breaking up a family, instead of Ginny coming to you on her own two feet. Not an adult relationship, not a partnership, not remotely fair to you or to Harry._ She let herself in the house, and only then did the tears fall down her face.


	9. An Argument

Luna wasn't sure what to do. She'd just rejected the love of her life, and there weren't really any indications that she'd have another chance. She hadn't many friends left — most had moved away or were married to people she'd been in love with or were dead. So she did what any normal, heartbroken, lonely, having-recently-rejected-the-love-of-her-life-for-reasons-she-couldn't-clearly-explain witch would do in that situation: she went to Hogsmeade, ordered a butterbeer from a blonde woman who looked vaguely familiar, and drank until she wasn't crying anymore. And then kept drinking, and kept drinking, and kept drinking.

"That's last call for you, pet, you can't have another. I'll call you a broom, unless you prefer a Floo escort." The blonde woman was smiling at Luna, so Luna frowned back.

"Excuse me, I have the money to pay, and I am of age, and," a hiccup, "you are a barmaid, are you not? Isn't your job to give me drinks and my job to pay you? What's the matter with you?"

"Luna, I'm not giving you anymore to drink, unless it's a sobering-up potion, and I've already sent off a warning owl to the other local pubs. You'll get no more drink tonight. Now, d'you prefer a broom or a Floo escort?" The blonde woman's face had reddened, and she looked strangely uncomfortable giving orders.

"You are a horrible barmaid. Horrible. And how do you know my name? And I could hex you, right now, and you'd give me more, and you have no idea what I've been through, and you'd best give me another drink before you regret it." All of this was said in Luna's best elocution, which at that moment was a mostly-slurred drawl of beer and crying, her tongue feeling fat and heavy, her face too hot and pinched.

"If you did you'd feel awful about it in the morning, Luna, and you'd remember me if you weren't so drunk."

Luna stared at the woman. Chubby, round-faced, pleasant open expression, big blue eyes, dirty blonde hair swept into two plaits like a schoolgirl. The Leaky Cauldron. A barmaid. "Hannah Abbott?"

"Ah, there you are," Hannah said with a smile. "Aye, it's me. I run the place now, and Neville teaches, you know. When did you get back in town?"

But Luna, having nodded off, didn't answer.

—-

Three days. That's how long it took for Luna to gather up her courage and go back to the Cauldron to apologize. It took three minutes for Neville Longbottom to sweep her up into a hug and tell her how much he'd missed her.

They closed the bar early and dragged her upstairs to their tiny, cramped, deliciously homey flat. Neville's books and potted plants were crammed into shelves and cabinets and the two small windows. Lace doilies and pale china dishes struggled valiantly against the dim cramped space, and if Luna had been in a better mood she would have giggled at the venomous tentacula cutting snapping at her from a cat-shaped teapot atop a lavender doily.

Neville had changed: he was smiling and chatty, full of questions about the plants Luna had seen in her travels, sweetly proud of his students and apparently overjoyed to gossip with someone who hadn't heard it all before. "I've a bunch of our old classmates' kids, now, you know that Padma Patil married a Muggle weatherman? Their daughter's quite a talent, I have hopes for her as an assistant someday. And Katie Bell married Oliver Wood, you know, the Quidditch dynasty of the century, their sons run the Gryffindor team now, one wants to teach, but Madame Hooch is still going strong, so it'll never happen."

Hannah, it turned out, was still a bit naive and a bit cloying, but she was also wickedly funny and very kind. She made Luna a cuppa while Neville talked about teaching at Hogwarts and the new crop of aconite he'd managed to coax out of the poor Hogsmeade soil. She cried on Hannah's shoulder and told them the whole story, and Neville fetched her a tin of crumbly biscuits and a butterbeer from downstairs.

"You did the right thing, Luna, dear," Hannah murmured, petting Luna's hair gently. "You may not want to hear it, but you did."

Luna hiccuped, sipped her butterbeer, and sniffled. "I know. But I just…" she trailed off, dissolving into tears again.

"Hannah's right," Neville said, nervously fiddling with his scarf. "You did what you needed to do. Like you said, she'd given no thought at all to you. That's hardly fair, Luna."

"I know, I know." Luna wiped her eyes and sat up straight. "Thank you both, honestly, you've been so kind."

"Come by next week, Luna, dear, we're having Dean and Seamus over for tea, they'd love to see you."

"And if you'd bring a cutting of your dirigible plums, I'm dying to see them. Mine never seem to take, the soil's too dry here."

Luna promised to do so, and waved goodbye as she stepped into the fireplace. "Lovegood house," she said clearly, and was whisked away to her home.

She had barely stepped out of the fireplace when the knock at the door came, loud and insistent.

"Who's there," she called, wiping soot off of her face and dusting off her robes.


	10. Yellow Flowers

It wasn't Ginny at the door. Luna'd thought…but never mind. It was Hermione Granger — Weasley, now, she supposed — carrying a pile of books and floating a pie behind her. "Luna, hello, sorry, can I set these down?"

Luna gaped a bit. "Um," shook her head, came back to herself, "sure, yes, of course, here, just there."

The pie was perfect: piping hot and golden-brown. Luna found two chipped green plates in a cupboard and whipped her wand at them to scour them clean.

"It's pecan and boysenberry, and I didn't make it so it should be all right," Hermione said with a wide smile. "Molly's a bit indisposed today or she'd have brought it over herself. How are you, Luna, dear?"

They'd never been friends, really, not at first. Their differences made the relationship fraught with peril for a while. But Luna had always respected Hermione's brains, and they spent a pleasant afternoon catching up on the more important developments in magical law. Luna told Hermione all about the Salem Witches' Institute and the Academia de Brujeria in Oaxaca, and Hermione lectured about the anti-pureblood laws she'd finally gotten the Wizengamot to agree on.

It was nice, and Luna didn't lie a bit when she said she'd love for Hermione to visit any time. "I've missed you all," she said with a smile, "Neville and Hannah have a list of people I'm supposed to find and chat up, so I suppose I'll be making the rounds now."

And she did, for the next few months. Dean and Seamus were happy in Hogsmeade, working in Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. Seamus had gotten a bit fat, and Dean still looked tired, but they were lovely to Luna. Dean showed her his paintings, which were dark and strangely beautiful, and Seamus sent her home with a cask of his homemade whiskey. He'd named it Fiendfyre and, apparently, she was supposed to convince Neville to sell it in the pub. Of course, Neville took one swallow and immediately placed a huge order, so she supposed it must have been rather tasty.

The list was pretty short: mostly Ravenclaws who weren't living in the area. Hannah had almost everyone else located, and Luna was dispatched to fill in the gaps. Marietta Edgecombe had died of some odd disease a few years ago in Morocco, and Roger Davies had married a Muggle and sold cloaks in Nice, France, now. No one was sure what had happened to Anthony Goldstein, and all Luna could find was an old forwarding address in Miami, Florida, but it didn't yield any results.

While she was in America, though, she bumped into Michael Corner in the street. They burst into tears and hugged — he'd heard a rumor that she'd died in Kenya. Luna had never really liked Michael, but things were different, after all, and he'd turned out all right in the end. He worked in a Muggle shoe store and didn't really keep in touch with anyone after the War ended, except for Terry Boot, who'd died last year from a doxy bite left too long untreated. Michael seemed to have grieved and moved on, but Luna left him her address, just in case: she knew better than anyone what it felt like to lose your only link to the world.

She was most happy about Professor Flitwick. He'd moved, after retirement, to some tiny village in Wales — she'd had a postcard from him once, on her birthday, inviting her to tea if she was ever nearby. So she took him up on it. The tiny man was still as pleasant and sweet as he'd ever been as her Head of House, and she cried as she mounted her broomstick to go home.

Dinners with Neville and Hannah and Dean and Seamus became weekly events, and she and Hermione had a monthly appointment to "talk shop." She dropped in at Hogwarts once, just to see, and had to leave almost immediately. Too many memories, too many new ghosts. Time normalized, after a while: she spent her days reading or cleaning or gardening. She had friends and chores and a sort of job, helping Hermione edit a book about the influence of wizarding law on Muggle law and vice versa. She had a cat she'd found in a shoebox; his name, she decided, was Argus, and he was as unfriendly as his namesake, but she loved him anyway. It wasn't much, but it was hers.

And then the yellow flowers bloomed, and Ginny Weasley was waiting in her kitchen. Luna'd been away for a lunch with Hannah, who was celebrating being pregnant after many years' trying. Ginny's hair was catching the sunlight, and Argus was crouched on the mantle, and Luna could only say, "Hannah Abbott's pregnant."

Ginny was confused, as anyone would have been. "Good for her, I suppose?"

"Um." Luna closed her mouth with a snap. "What do you need, Ginevra?"

The flinch Ginny gave was not nearly as satisfying as Luna'd expected. "Eurgh, Ginevra. No one calls me that, Luna, not anymore." She looked down at her hands, drawing Luna's eye there as well.

"Your ring is gone." Apparently the Nargles were at it again, or something that made one say the most inane and worthless things.

"Yes." Ginny looked back up, met Luna's eyes. "We've been divorced for months now. It…it was right. The children all went to him, and I understand, believe me. I would, too, given the choice." Her face went carefully blank, and Luna recognized herself there: going blank to keep from crying. "Anyway. I thought…I thought I might stop by. Not for anything, I mean, just. To say hello." She looked away.

"Um."

"And I mean, Ron and Bill and Mum, everyone would love to see you. And I know I'm the reason you're not coming to the Burrow, why you and Hermione meet all the time but never there. Why you won't go in the shop or near any one of us. It's my fault," blinking back tears, "and I'm sorry. You don't need to worry, I won't. Make it harder for you, I mean."

A long pause.

"I love you." The redhead took a gulping breath and words spilled out of her. "I do, I don't know why I tried to. But that's not the point, the point is, I love you, and I have treated you like utter shit for years and years and it's not fair, not at all, and I'm sorry." She took another breath, swallowing air like a drowning woman. "I don't want you to fear me or hate me. I want you to be my friend, if you can, because I love you and I miss you and—"

Luna's lips on hers drowned out the rest of the words.


End file.
